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Final Exam Study Guide

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30 views4 pages

Final Exam Study Guide

Uploaded by

nickjrusso92
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE

Oral Culture: Societies reliant on spoken communication rather than written texts.

In Media Res: Starting a narrative in the middle of events.

Guilds: Associations of tradesmen, significant in medieval theater.

Pageant Wagons: Mobile stages used in cycle plays during medieval times.

Natyasastra: Ancient Indian text on performance and theater production.

Kyogen: Japanese comedic interludes performed between Noh plays.

Commedia dell’Arte: Improvisational Italian theater with stock characters.

Pit: The standing area in English Renaissance theaters, often for lower-class spectators.

Onnagata: Male Kabuki actors specializing in female roles.

Fourth Wall: The invisible boundary between actors and the audience in proscenium
stages.

Aristotle’s Elements of Tragedy

1. Plot

2. Character

3. Verbal Expression

4. Thought

5. Song

6. Visual Elements

Aristotle’s Elements of Comedy

1. Incongruity

2. Reversal

3. Repetition
4. Misunderstanding

5. Mistaken Identity

Elements of Commedia dell’Arte

- Improvisation

- Use of stock characters (masked and unmasked)

- Lazzi (physicalized routines)

- Mixed-gender troupes

- Professional touring companies

Key Historical Developments

1. Major Forces of Change in Theater:

- Material activity (production, trade)

- Institutions (religious and political systems)

- Ideas (philosophy, science)

2. Dionysian Festivals:

- Rural Dionysia

- Lenaia

- Anthesteria

- City Dionysia

3. Spanish Golden Age Themes:

- Love, Honor, Duty


- Political power (not saints or deities)

4. Neoclassicism’s Three Unities:

- Action: Single major plotline

- Time: Events occur within one day

- Place: Single location

5. Sentimentalism in Theater:

- Evoked sympathy and moral humor

- Dominant in 18th-century bourgeois culture.

Cultural Comparisons

- Kabuki vs. English Theatre (1700-1800s): Both shared strict government surveillance, box
and gallery seating, and repertory theaters despite being culturally isolated.

- Sentimentalism Across Europe: Influenced French, German, and English theater.


Germany’s G.E. Lessing opposed French Neoclassicism in favor of Shakespearean
methods.

Significant Figures

- Zeami: Developed Noh theater in Japan.

- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Feminist playwright who reshaped Spanish Golden Age theater
with her "falda y empeño" plays.

- David Garrick: Revolutionized acting and stage presence in 18th-century England.


- Molière: French playwright known for his satirical works adhering to and subverting
Neoclassical ideals.

Exam-Ready Pop Quiz Questions

1. What are the three types of nationalism?

- Liberal, Cultural, Racial.

2. Name a common element in Elizabethan theater.

- Play-within-a-play conceit.

3. What is metatheatricality?

- Theatrical self-reference.

4. True or False: The French Revolution eliminated sentimentalism in European theater.

- True.

5. Who reinstated professional theater in England and allowed women as actors?

- King Charles II.

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